Robert Lamm Promises Classic Chicago-ness At Oakdale

In the early 1980s, Chicago was a non-threatening, soft-rock band, with synthesizers and horns, led by ever-smiling frontman Peter Cetera.

But every year, some college freshman sits down with “Chicago Transit Authority,” the band’s kick-ass 1969 debut, and becomes a convert. (I did, anyway.) Songs like “Beginnings,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “South California Purples,” written by keyboardist/singer Robert Lamm, still crackle with energy. Others — Chicago’s drum-circle cover of the Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man,” for example — stretch out like late-’60s period pieces, with fuzzed-out guitar solos and stacked vocal harmonies. (And, of course, those horns.)

“I hear that story a lot,” says Lamm, who also wrote “25 or 6 to 4,” “Saturday in the Park” and other hits.

The current Chicago lineup — original members Lamm (keyboards), Lee Loughnane (trumpet/flugelhorn), James Pankow (trombone) and Walt Parazaider (sax/flute/clarinet); longtime players Jason Scheff (bass/vocals), Tris Imboden (drums), and Keith Howland (guitar); and relative newcomers Lou Pardini (vocals) and Walfredo Reyes Jr. (percussion) — plays the Toyota Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford on Saturday, Oct. 24.

Chicago might soon get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — finally. The band trails only the Beach Boys in chart success, and it continues to release new music; “Chicago 36: Now,” its 24th studio album, came out last summer, with new songs written by Lamm (the weirdly trance-y, Middle East-inspired “Naked in the Garden of Allah,” for example) and other band members.

For the first few Chicago albums, Lamm wrote on his own.

“We rehearsed all the songs and even played a few of them live before we stepped into the studio to record the first album,” he says. “But certainly, as it has always happened with us, things started to get tweaked a little bit.”

Over the years, however, Lamm got used to collaborating with other songwriters; now he’s back to working alone. “It’s a conscious thing on my part,” he says. “I’ve gotten better as a musician, and I’m definitely better as a lyricist.” The one exception is Pardini, who joined Chicago five years ago.

“He’s such an amazing musician, and he and I share a dressing room and warm-up piano before the gigs, so we have become very close with each other musically.”

Part of Lamm’s resistance to writing with others is carry-over from that ballad-heavy 1980s stretch, when Chicago worked with producer David Foster (and was signed to Warner Brothers). “There was a trend toward the producer getting his hands into every song,” Lamm says. “It was partly as a control thing, partly as a contributing-an-idea thing, but also as a financial thing. I was always suspicious of that.”

At the time, with Foster working the boards and Cetera singing, Chicago had more than its share of tender hits: “Hard To Say I’m Sorry,” “You’re the Inspiration,” “Hard Habit to Break,” and so on. Amid tensions within the group, Cetera departed in 1985.

“Any songs that I contributed, or presented, for the three or so albums that Foster did, or any subsequent albums with other producers (with the exception of Phil Ramone), the producers wanted to get in there and put their stamp on it,” Lamm says. “I’m lucky in that I’m such a quirky writer that my quirkiness tends to come through, regardless of who I collaborate with. But also I’m probably the least commercial, for lack of a better word. The least commercial pop oriented writer in the band, anyway.”

Some of that quirkiness translated into pop gold — literally. “Saturday in the Park,” for example, a single from the 1972 album “Chicago V,” reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold more than one million units.

“It was just an unpremeditated song,” Lamm says. “It happened, and it happened quickly, and it’s been very successful.”

A song like “Naked in the Garden of Allah,” however, isn’t nearly as accessible. “It’s a very limited audience that gets that song and wants to hear it more than a couple of times,” Lamm says.

New songs have Chicago-ness (“a euphemism for the horns,” Lamm says) baked in during the writing process, or sometimes added after the fact.

“That’s been an ongoing discussion. Writing for Chicago: I would always make sure that there was some B section or C section that would show off a horn solely, an ensemble, or a guitar solo or a horn solo, just because it’s the band.”

And adding those newer songs to an already-stacked live set, Lamm adds, is difficult.

“We’ve been tortured our entire career,” he says, “but we’re lucky that we have a career, and we’re lucky that we have the repertoire that we do.”

On the last tour, “America” and “Now,” from “Chicago 36,” made the cut. But this year, Chicago hasn’t played any songs from the new album live.

“We’ve had 70 — or some crazy number like that — charted singles,” Lamm says. “We’ve figured out through trial and error which things work best in what order, and we keep pretty much to that. The proof is the reaction that the audience gives us every night from night to night. It’s consistent. It doesn’t matter what country we’re in, what audience we’re playing to, it works.”

CHICAGO performs at the Toyota Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford on Saturday, Oct. 24, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $39 to $130. Information: oakdale.com.